For most of the last forty odd years, we have been trying to live a more resilient, self-sufficient and sustainable life and while I admit to not being the sharpest tool in the shed, that length of experience is bound to have an impact on even the dimmest. This article is part of an irregular series of articles where I try to summarise some of the hard-won wisdom those years have bought!
A goal without a plan is just a wish
In the early years of our place we wanted to be more self-sufficient, sustainable (although the word was not in vogue then) and resilient, but we were not operating to any sort of plan, so it just grew as we did things, and yeah, it shows. As an example of the fun a no-plan plan can cause – we had some friends turn up to help us put in a herb spiral (turned out to be more of a herb wedding cake, but anyway) and a banana circle. With absolutely no planning at all I determined the correct location for the banana circle was the north east corner of the front yard – where it was too dry, shady and the soil was crappy.
They languished there for 10 years, producing nary a banana and with the plants not getting much taller than me and being very slender (unlike me). As a result of implementing a planning process (Permaculture) for our place some other friends helped me transfer the bananas to the back yard where I was able to run waste water directly from the spa, there is no mulberry tree to shade them, and the soil is much better. Consequently they are now higher than the house and produce multiple bunches of bananas every year. All this was the result of a plan.
There is no doubt about it, if I was using a planning process from the start, the back yard in particular would look much different and we would be making much more efficient use of the land, thus allowing us to produce more. The annual veggie patches are all in the back yard, and because they developed over time they are not all together in the one spot: there are six near the southern fence, three closer to the centre of the yard, four against the western fence and one near the northern fence. This means that the chook tractor needs to be carried from one area to another. More importantly in means I need to leave considerable areas open as paths to allow the chook tractor to be transported between each of the productive areas. (and I’m too old to go starting again from scratch!)
As the years moved on I became exposed to planning processes as a result of work, TAFE and University studies and discovering permaculture. I even developed my own planning tool the SLAM (Sustainable Lifestyle Assessment Matrix – and no, the name is NOT corny!). Even though we were well into our journey by then I still found the planning process to be very valuable, allowing me to make the best use of time and money to improve our productivity. So it is worth going through the process even if you are not just starting out on your journey!
Having put together a plan and started working our way through it, I have found it useful to review the plan on a regular (or irregular) basis, just to see how things are working out, and to take into account later researches or experience. In addition to ad hoc reviews through the year, Linda and I do a formal review once per year at our so called ‘Directors Meeting’, usually in November. We sit down over coffee and go through the plan and assess were we are, where we are going and what (if any) changes to the plan are required. This approach might not work for everyone but it seems to work well for us.
